Twin
Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul) residents have a cornucopia of grocery shopping
options. Theres SuperTarget for the suburban three-car family; Whole Foods
for elite urbanistas; Byerlys for wealthy gray-hairs; Lunds for urban
singles; Rainbow and Cub for the minivan-and-lunchbox set; Kowalskis for
people who mix and match all of the above; and SuperValu for those unwashed
enough to care about price.

But its no longer sufficient
to just eat your vegetables; now they have to be organic. Not Wal-Mart organic,
either. Real organic, grown by hippies who have thought deeply about the relationships
of the Hopi to a particular strain of corn. And delivered to market in a way
that consumed no fossil fuels and created no toxic byproducts.

The weekly shopping run has become
inextricably found up with the modern shoppers identity. The choice is
about money, certainly, but its also about tribe. The store tells who
you are - and just as important - who you are not.

You are where you
eat: What your choice of grocery stores says about who you are by Beth
Hawkins, City Pages, March 7, 2007, p. 17

The move to the
suburbs was about social stratification (and racial identity). The more affluent
citizens who could afford to buy property in large parcels away from the urban
masses wanted other amenities as well.

In 1980, when a Twin Cities
grocer named Don Byerly opened his fifth store, the opulence of this store in
St. Louis Park turned more than a few heads. An enormous chandelier hanging
over the freezer section was visible from the front door. A new premium ice
cream called Haagen-Daz was packed in the freezers. The aisles were carpeted,
and huge lobsters were seen crawling over each other in an oceanic tank. Next
to the Byerlys store was a gift shop that sold crystal decanters, an upscale
restaurant, and a wine shop.

The novelty of opulent
supermarkets has worn off. The Food Marketing Institute reports: With
tangible luxuries no longer atop the pyramid, intangibles like service and experiences
now dominate ... The mainstreaming of affluence means big opportunities ahead.
A more recent trend has been the socially responsible consumer of foods. Some
buy fair traded coffee from Latin America, confident that the peasant
growers will be adequately rewarded for their labor. Health-conscious consumers
insist on organically grown produce. Farmers certify that the food has been
produced without pesticides and other toxic materials.

Whole Foods, a supermarket
chain originating in an Austin, Texas, food coop, has pitched its wares to this
segment of the market. The article in City Pages reports: Stepping into
a Whole Foods feels like entering a temple of sumptuous purity. Huge signs explain
the companys commitment not to sell foods containing artificial preservatives,
colors, flavors, sweeteners, and hydrogenated fats. Other advertisements offer
mini-profiles of the artisans who grew the mushrooms or cultured the cheese.
Customers are invited to sample imported, exotic salts. Whole foods controls
its image by controlling its inventory. Its as if one dented orange box
of Gain laundry detergent would cause the entire artifice to topple.

And so we have food stores
oriented to two types of affluent customers: the nouveau riche or those customers
dazzled by sumptuous, expensive products; and the more discriminating, thoughtful,
and socially aware type of customers. For simplicitys sake, we can identify
these two types as Republican and Democratic, respectively. The rich Democrats
are those who temper their inherent guilt at being rich with socially conscious
consumer behavior; the Republicans dont care about this sort of thing.

In addition, there are
the poor people who shop for groceries mainly on the basis of price. For them,
stores such as Rainbow Foods and Cub Foods offer food products with generally
low prices. Other food discounters such as Costco and Sams Club encourage
low-cost, large-quantity purchases in a warehouse-like setting. The customer
instinctively associates low prices with buying in volume.

The City Pages article
has profiled the three types of shopper with illustrations of models each carrying
particular products and dressed in a certain way:

The Byerlys shopper
is a middle-aged woman with eyebrows perfectly arched by Juut and
wearing a string of Mikimoto cultured pearls. She has in her right hand a brick
of Brie cheese, triple cream, of course - higher butter fat than what
the neighbor put out when she hosted the Book Club last month. This customer
has French cuffs to give her somewhere to put the semi-precious stones.
She is carrying a reusable bag which nicely conceals high-fiber,
low-cal nibbles purchased to counteract the brie and the white-flour baguette.
Tynant still wine, costing $4.17, is in a red bottle because
the girls in the book club have done that Blue Welsh water.

For Whole Foods, we have
a more youthful man wearing a sweater and jeans whose expensive rimless
glasses says he dresses down by choice. He is carrying a biodynamic
eggplant in his right hand, in case that petite rolfer hes
cooking for notices that kind of thing. His post soul-patch facial
hair ... shows commitment and maturity. That hemp sweater
he is wearing only looks like Old Navy; in fact its fair-trade certified.
He is carrying in his left hand a reusable string bag worth a nickel at
(the) checkout (counter); plus, (it) shows off his good taste. A can of
carrot juice in this bag is something that no one actually likes, this
guy included. The bag also contains the current issue of Runners
World magazine, because Ultramarathoner seems pretentious. Some organic
green tea in the bag is an antioxidant because the running was preceded
by years of American spirits.

Finally, we have a female
shopper a Cub Foods, perhaps in her 30s, who is lugging four paper bags full
of groceries. Her hair is platinum blonde, suggesting, perhaps, that after
high school, daughter has a real future in cosmetology. She is wearing
a pair of Reeboks athletic shoes worn because theres
almost an acre of aisles in that store, and maybe one of these days her husband
will feel like walking with her. A bag of off-brand Fruity Os
is jutting out of the bag she is carrying; it hasnt occurred to
her this is why Little Ryan needs Adderall. Behind it is a box of Reggios
pizza, famous for its butter crust, because a pound of cheese isnt
enough dairy. The Laundry Detergent in another bag is not
just lavender-scented (but) Lavender-Vanilla. This woman has also bought
a carton of eggs because she discovered during her Atkins phase (that)
theyre the absolute cheapest protein.